The Life of a Custom Mowing contractor

[Rustyiron]

Great thread Hay!

 

[Hay Dude]

That's got to be scary as he77, a fire on a field and machine full of dry fuel. What do you carry for fire control?

I‘m scared of fire. Always have been. Had 2 round baler fires, but I got them early, so minimal damage.

The Challenger and the Magnum both have on board marine/auto (white) extinguishers in the cab. The Challenger also has a large stainless fire extinguisher outside. The Krone baler also has an on board stainless fire extinguisher.
Massey has a pretty big ABC extinguisher in the cab.

 

[mrmikey]

I‘m scared of fire. Always have been. Had 2 round baler fires, but I got them early, so minimal damage.

Cause? bearings, exhaust or?
I assume water would be the best rather than dry chem or others?

 

[Hay Dude]

Cause? bearings, exhaust or?
I assume water would be the best rather than dry chem or others?

Bearings in a brand new baler that were either defective, or un greased from factory.
Other was a belt tracking off the rollers and rubbed side of baler frame.

 

[Hay Dude]

Back at it today. Made about 25 nice 4x4x5 feed hay bales and 45 typical 4x4x8 large square bales.

Crossing the old Baltimore & Ohio rail berm into a 10 acre field.
If you look closely you can see the old B&O rails in front of my Magnum.

Baling some 60“ feed bales @ 850-950 lbs.

Carrying some of the 4x4x5 bales out of field back across the old RR tracks.

Back to truck & trailer strapped down and ready to go into the barn.

 

[Hay Dude]

Today brought us more sun. I hit the 10:30 service, skipped lunch and began raking around 12. By 2;30 had 10 more acres raked & baled. Here’s a view of my Krone 4x4 XC baler from rear window of the Magnum. It’s about the size of a 10 wheel dump truck. Weighs 37,000lbs so theres a lot of weight there.

Here, I’m stacking bales 4-high.

Tested some bales. Range was 10-22.

Field finished & ready for 2nd cutting

Knocked off about 5pm. Heading home. 18th gear, 23 MPH.

 

[mrmikey]

I can't begin to imagine the amount of maintenance that machine requires, the timing of everything working together correctly. Not to jinx you, but how long can a machine like that run without major problems given the correct maintenance.
Keep up the posts btw, very interesting.

 

[Hay Dude]

I can't begin to imagine the amount of maintenance that machine requires, the timing of everything working together correctly. Not to jinx you, but how long can a machine like that run without major problems given the correct maintenance.
Keep up the posts btw, very interesting.

You would be correct. Grease fittings everywhere. Lots of issues and adjustments.
I average about 1 week between some sort of issue, be it tractors or balers. I lost a trip spring on the Krone baler Friday. Was able to keep baling without it. Trip spring is coming in middle of this week.
The automatic greaser system is trust and blind faith. $10,000 systems greased automatically. Then there’s about 20 more I have to grease manually.

The hay mowers and field mowers seem to be pretty trouble free (knock on wood).

 

[scootr]

Great pics. Those are big bales. Looks like nice hay too.
Keep us posted.

 

[mrmikey]

The automatic greaser system is trust and blind faith

We use them on all our (I say our before I retired LOL ) heavy equipment, loaders, graders, excavators etc. They worked pretty much trouble free provided the correct viscosity grease was used, especially in the winter, summer wasn't too bad.
You'd get some, " I don't give a s**t" yahoo put EP3 in where it calls for an EP0 and wonder why it either doesn't pump or blows the lines out. That was usually the only problem other than tearing lines off.
On auto grease machines, the components that weren't greased automatically were the ones that gave out first. U joints was the most common failure along with front end components on tandems which didn't have greasers installed.